


Only Human

by LadyLoec



Category: The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms, The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol Withdrawal, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bonnie is having none of Damon's shit, Damon hates being human, Elena Gilbert Bashing, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Human Damon Salvatore, Mentioned Elena Gilbert, Post-Season/Series 08 Finale, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 18:22:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18078632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLoec/pseuds/LadyLoec
Summary: A reader asked for post season 8 Bamon. Here it is!When Elena walks out, it leaves Damon broken, alone, and mortal. Bonnie gets him through it and helps him come to terms with being human, and it just might be the best thing that ever happened to both of them.(Not my characters - just borrowing them for a while!)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Although this was a reader request, Damon's speech in ch4 has been rolling around in my head in one form or another for a while, so thanks for prompting me! 
> 
> This fic is relatively canon compliant up until the very end of the final episode of the series that assumes Damon and Elena's 'long and happy life together'. It is also not particularly Elena friendly. You have been warned!

Her phone trilled in her pocket.

_Typical,_ Bonnie thought to herself, _back on the grid for less than a day and already I can't find a moment's peace._

Since posting on her social media that she was back in the land of the free having finished her travels (Christ, had she really been gone three years?), her phone had NOT. STOPPED. RINGING.

 

Bonnie could have sworn there was less than a minute between hitting the 'post' button and Caroline's call, squealing in excitement at having her best friend back and demanding they meet up for coffee immediately if not sooner to hear all about her trip (though for someone so purportedly interested in hearing about it, Care didn't let her get a word in edgeways). Elena living incognito with Damon to hide the cure had apparently left her sorely lacking a girly BFF. It was only when she had heard Ric shout something about a 'situation' in the library (apparently running a school for magically gifted children occasionally meant dropping everything to deal with an extradimensional portal or two) that Caroline finally ended the call.

 

An hour or so later, Matt was on the phone, and although his call was brief, it was warm and friendly. She hadn't realised how much she had missed him.

 

A little after that, Jeremy called, and that had been... interesting. She still felt her heart lurch a little even after so many years at the sound of his voice. She wondered if that would ever properly fade away.

 

Bonnie frowned a little at the 'unknown caller' displayed on the phone's screen. She ruefully thought that everyone else she knew was either in hiding or dead. Her thumb hovered over the 'End Call' button for a moment, but something - a certain snarky ex-vampire would have called it her 'witchy spidey sense' - told her to answer it.

"Hello?" She said tentatively.

There was nothing on the other end for a moment. She was about to hang up when...

"I missed your voice."

Her heart stopped for a second.

"D-Damon? Oh my god Damon, is that you?"

"The one and only." There was none of his casual arrogance in his tone and his words were indistinct, but it was definitely him.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Her heart lurched. She wanted so badly to talk to her best friend, but his safety was more important, so here she was reprimanding him instead. "You're supposed to be in hiding!"

"You remember that time in 1994 when we played hide and go seek, and I cheated and tracked you with the smell of your shampoo, and you wouldn't talk to me for 3 days?" His words were slurred, so he was drunk. Perfect. She pinched the bridge of her nose in exasperation.

"Damon, let me talk to Elena."

He laughed mirthlessly. "No can do, Sabrina."

"Why? You afraid she's gonna beat your ass for getting hammered and blowing your cover. Because god knows you deserve-"

"She left." Those words - so heavy with emotion and pain - cut right through Bonnie like a knife. "She left, and Stefan's dead, and I'm human, and I'm _alone_ , and... and I fucked things up so bad, Bon."

_Fuck_. If there's one thing more dangerous than risking the location of the cure getting out, it's Damon Salvatore on a self-destructive spiral. Bonnie knew that better than almost anyone.

"Where are you?"

 

 

\-----

 

The flight to Colorado had been smooth enough, and the journey from the airport uneventful, but Bonnie may as well have been sat of a bed of nails. Bonnie paid the cab driver and stretched as she silently appraised the bar from the outside. At first appearance, it was a little rough around the edges, but on closer inspection, that was a part of the warmth and homey charm that made it inviting. A half smile spread on her lips - the place practically screamed 'Damon'. She made her way inside.

 

The bar was as cosy inside as she thought it would be. It was the kind of place she could imagine - in another life - Ric and Damon perched on stools at the bar shooting the shit. She smiled sadly at the thought. The bartender, who was a hipstery guy wearing a black and white flannel shirt not unlike the ones Damon used to wear in the prison world, acknowledged her with a nod and a smile as he cleaned a glass.

"Hey, what can I get you?"

She took in a nervous breath. "Actually I'm looking for Damon. Is he around?"

He gave her a look up and down that was the nonverbal equivalent of _'Really?'_. He put down the glass and leaned in sympathetically.

"Look, you seem like a nice girl. Don't take it personally if he didn't call after, okay? You can do better."

_Some things never change_ , she thought ruefully.

"I'm gonna do you a favour and pretend I don't know what you're implying, And you're damn right I can do better." She sighed. "I'm an old friend - where is he?"

Bartender guy looked almost relieved. "Where he's been for the last month and a half." He gestured to the door behind him that she presumed led to the living space upstairs. "Drinking himself into a coma. He gonna be pissed if I let you up there?"

"Well I told him I was coming but he was pretty far gone, so he might have forgotten."

His expression softened a little. "What are your chances at getting some actual food and water into him?"

"That bad, huh?"  
"I'm surprised he can still stand."

Bonnie sighed. "I'll do my best."

The bartender seemed to consider that good enough. slid the hatch up and stepped aside to let her past. Bracing herself, Bonnie turned the doorknob and headed up the stairs.


	2. Chapter 2

Bonnie reached the doorway at the top of the stairs and raised a hand to knock. She hesitated for a moment before screwing her courage to the sticking place and pounding on the door.

"I swear to god Tony," (so that was the bartender's name) "if you aren't accompanied by either a bottle of Macallen or a Victoria's Secret Angel with low self esteem and daddy issues, I'm gonna throw your ass down the stairs."

She suppressed a smile. "Just the one Angel, Damon? Wow, being human must've really nuked your libido."

Bonnie heard what sounded like a muffled _'What the fuck?'_ , the unmistakable clank of bottles and some scrambling, stomping and fumbling before the lock released with an audible 'click' and the door flew open.

 

He looked awful. He was paler somehow than he was even when he was dead, with a sallow tint to his complexion that looked like he was 3 fingers of whiskey away from jaundice. His rumpled black t-shirt hung loosely off of his frame, so he had obviously lost some weight recently. His hair was a mess: Not the kind of sex-hair chic he normally sported, an actual mess, which was completely unlike the meticulously kempt Damon she knew who had whined about the lack of decent hair products in 1994. His eyes (still that heart-stopping shade of ice blue that she'd half thought was supernatural in origin) were bloodshot and underscored with dark purple smudges that looked like he hadn't had a decent night's sleep in weeks. The smell really topped off the whole look - he definitely shouldn't go anywhere near an open flame anytime soon. There were also more subtle changes; tiny markers of the passage of time that would have escaped the notice of anyone not intimately familiar with his face (the kind of intimacy that comes with spending months with no-one else to look at): The shallowest of lines. For the first time in all the years since she'd known him, he was _older_.

 

But in spite of all the changes, he was still Damon, and it was unfathomably good to see him. Tears welled in her eyes as she threw her arms around the best friend who only yesterday she thought she would never see again.

"You're an idiot." She bawled into his shoulder. She had been bracing herself for him to be warmer than she was used to, and was surprised to find he wasn't. He must really be running on fumes to be this cold.

"Bonnie" He breathed her name into her hair like a prayer, like he was still trying to convince himself she wasn't a hallucination.

They stood there for over a minute, just holding each other, and with his fingers tangled in her hair like he was afraid to let go she honestly would have stayed there forever. It was Damon who finally broke the embrace, and the silence.

"Not that I'm not crazy happy to see you, but what are you doing here, Bon-Bon?"

"You called me, moron." He looked baffled. "Yesterday. You told me about... That she's gone. And frankly you sounded seven kinds of insane, so I jumped the next plane. An apparently it's a good thing I did, because you look like hell." She snuck a glance behind him and frowned - the apartment was a mess of empty and broken bottles, a few empty takeout boxes with mouldering food inside, and clothes strewn everywhere. Damon used to abhor her leaving books out in the library - he was a neat freak. This wasn't like him at all. "Look, no offense, but you could use a shower. Why don't you go wash up and I'll try and straighten the place up a bit?"

He was still looking at her like he was convinced she would disappear the second he took his eyes off of her, but she shot him her best 'no nonsense Bonnie' glare (he had once jokingly called it her 'Mistress Bonnie' look and offered to buy her the outfit to match). He stumbled back into the apartment, slamming a door behind him (out of clumsiness, not ire - she vainly hoped he would be able to keep his balance in the shower and she wouldn't have to call an ambulance out). When she heard the pipework burst into life, she released a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding and threw herself into clearing up. She took care of the broken glass first, then found some trash bags under the sink and gathered up the worst of the junk. There was a raised area off to the back of the living area separated by a half wall that she presumed was the bedroom, so she grabbed the discarded clothes and headed in that direction in search of a hamper.

 

The bedroom was nowhere near as trashed as the rest of the apartment. There was a stack of dumbbells and workout gear in the corner that told her he had been making an effort not to lose his physique before Elena had left. She smiled a little when she imagined Damon panicking at the fact that a beer belly was an actual threat now. She found the hamper and dumped the clothes in it before her eyes snagged on something else. On the dresser, there was a multi-compartment photo frame, which she felt compelled to go over and pick up.

 

In the first section of the frame was a picture of Ric and the twins when they were tiny - Ric was holding little Josie's hands up in the air, maybe teaching her to walk. In the next section, there was one of Bonnie, Elena and Caroline that must have been taken in the year before Elena's parents had died, and she smiled at how young and happy they all looked. In the third was a picture of Grayson and Miranda beaming with a little baby Jeremy and toddler Elena on their laps. The last compartment held two smaller photos: One was very old and faded with time, the sepia tones bleeding into one another, but there probably weren't too many other photos of Stefan around. The final photo was a Polaroid, discoloured around the edges like it had been held a few too many times. It had probably lived in a wallet for a while. She remembered when it was taken - she wistfully remembered calling it 'The Night of Badness': She and Damon had been bored out of their minds stuck in 1994, and in a moment of uncharacteristic silliness, Damon had declared that the only cure for their predicament was dancing and cocktails. They had rigged up the old sound system in the parlour and spent hours drinking margaritas and dancing on tables as if they were at any one of a million bars back home, crowded with people having as great a time as they were. At some point, they had started taking photos on an old Polaroid camera. She had woken up the next morning with the worst hangover of her life and a stomach full of regrets and had destroyed all the photographic evidence. Or so she had thought - apparently, this one had survived. In it, she had a cocktail umbrella tucked behind her ear and it looked like Damon had caught her by surprise by wrapping an arm around her waist from behind and dragging her in for the picture. Her eyes were closed and she was squealing with laughter, whereas he had a genuine smile on his face as he looked at the camera. She ran a thumb over the glass, wondering if she'd ever seen him look so happy as he did there. She tried to reconcile it with the broken person that had ducked into the bathroom twenty minutes ago, and her heart lurched. She put the frame back and walked back into the kitchen.

 

The last thing she did was collect up the remaining bottles of booze and pour their contents down the sink. She was almost done when the bathroom door opened and Damon walked out followed by a cloud of steam. She was thankful he'd bothered to at least put on pants, but he hadn't done them up, and hadn't bothered with a shirt. He was ruffling his hair with a towel when his eyes caught sight of her, going wide with fury.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Bon?! That's a hundred dollar bottle of scotch!" When she showed no signs of stopping, he dropped the towel and all but fell down the steps into the kitchen as he lurched to grab it from her. Time was, he would have caught her before she could blink. But as a human with his reflexes dulled from drink, she easily evaded him and he overbalanced, falling backwards onto his ass.

"Oh, that's attractive." She snorted. "Don't you think your liver has been through enough? No more booze. And you're gonna drink a pint of water and eat a sandwich or something if I have to sit on you and force it down your stupid throat."

He flashed her a cocky smirk from the floor. "Which part of me are you planning on sitting on? I can offer some choice suggestions."

"You're disgusting." She said with more venom than she felt.

His response was an exaggerated stage whisper. "I know." Then he collapsed into a fit of giggles, but there was no humour in it. "God, I'm so screwed up."

"No arguments here." Her attitude softened when she saw how broken he looked. "Look, if you can haul your ass up, go sit on the sofa. I'll be there in a few, okay?"

When he scrambled to his feet, she braced herself over the sink and allowed herself a second to compose herself before setting herself to task.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have teared up a little writing about the photo frame...


	3. Chapter 3

No such luck as anything remotely fresh in the refrigerator, but there were a couple of cans of soup in the cupboard. That would have to do for now. Honestly, she wasn't sure if he could stomach solid food right now anyway. She heated up a can and brought it over to him, along with a large glass of water.

"Thanks, Bon." She put the tray down on the table in front of him. When she went to withdraw her hand, he caught her by the wrist. "Really, thank you."

Not really knowing what to say to that, she just nodded and took the seat opposite him, watching him eat in silence. When he was done, she made herself ask the question that had been eating away at her.

"What happened?"

"It doesn't matter."  
"It does matter, Damon."

"We fought. She left. End of story."

"No. You don't get to do that, damnit. _You_ called _me_ , and I'll be damned if I just flew a couple thousand miles for you to shut me out. WHAT. HAPPENED?"

Damon sighed and leaned forward, face in his palms. "I think I'm sobering up. God, this is horrible." Bonnie stood up and made for the door. It was a bluff, he had to know that she wouldn't leave him like this, didn't he? "Wait, please don't go." Apparently not. It was tragic the way he just assumed people would just abandon him.

 

She turned and looked at him expectantly, her eyes meeting his bloodshot ones. "Sorry to disappoint, but it wasn't anything dramatic. Well, not to start with." Bonnie moved to sit back down as he spoke. "Elena was working long hours at the hospital, I was busting my ass getting the bar up and running. We'd been trying for a kid and eighteen months later nothing was happening. We started fighting. A lot. About everything: Money, whose turn it was to cook, her leaving her textbooks all over the damn floor. About her career coming first. About my drinking. About my brother - that's always a classic. I was an asshole and kept playing the _'I gave up eternity for you'_ card. You can imagine how that went down." He sank his head down. "It was all downhill from day one. We were never meant to last."

Most relationships didn't end with a bang, they fizzled out. But Bonnie knew Damon well enough to know she wasn't getting the whole story.

"What else?"

He looked sideways at her. "I hate it when you do that. Why can't you just fall for my bullshit like everyone else?" She half-smiled. "I called up Meredith Fell. Got her to run some tests on the sly about our little problem. Had to be her just in case ex-vampire physiology sent modern medicine into meltdown. The cure can fix a lot of things, but apparently a century and a half of being dead and marinating yourself in scotch isn't a recipe for great fertility." A wry smile "The irony of the eternal stud shooting blanks is not lost on me, by the way. Ric would never let me live it down that his swimmers work and mine don't." A heavy sigh from Damon. " I didn't have the heart to tell Elena. Kept it to myself. I'll let you fill in the blanks of what went through my mind when a few weeks later she waltzes out of the bathroom with a positive pregnancy test, proudly telling me how I'm gonna be a dad."

Anger at Elena warred in her chest with pity for Damon. "Oh my God. Damon, I'm so sorry. Who...?"

"Don't know. Didn't care to ask. I kept my poker face somehow." He continued. His voice was devoid of emotion. "Of course, because I'm a fucking sociopath, I had to hurt her back, so I kept up appearances and put on a little show for her a couple days later. What was her name? Vanessa? Victoria? Who the fuck cares. Had her legs wrapped around my head when Elena came home from work. Never told her I'd found her out - just let her pack her shit and go, yelling the whole time about how I'm a cheating lowlife. Pot and kettle much? Anyway, better for her to think it had nothing to do with her. I'd rather be the bad guy than the victim."

 

Bonnie had no words. Nothing she could say could convey how sorry she was that he had gone through that. So she didn't use words. She went over and knelt in front of him, pulling him into a hug. Now that he'd eaten something, he was warm, and he smelled like expensive shampoo instead of booze. His hands rested against her back as he buried his face in her neck. His breath was warm on her skin and she relaxed into him, trying to offer comfort where words had failed her. Damon, however, clearly took it to mean something else, as she felt the fingers of one hand splay across her back and the other make its way up towards her hair, and his lips grazed her neck. She shivered a little, but stiffened.

"Damon, stop." He either didn't hear her protest (which she had to admit sounded a little weak to her own ears) or didn't care, as he pulled her tighter against him, his fingers tightening in her hair as he pressed a hot kiss to her neck. "Damon, STOP!" Bonnie threw herself back and stood up, but he stood with her and she found herself backed up against the wall. "I don't think of you like that."

He laughed darkly, stalking towards her. Apparently he could still look like a predator even as a human. "Say it again, Witchy, once more, with feeling. Maybe you'll even believe it this time."

Her slap against his cheek echoed across the empty apartment. That was a low blow, even for him.

 

The time they spent together in the prison world, he would have had to be deaf, dumb and blind not to notice her attraction to him. Even when she had hated him, she had wanted him, and when they had become friends, things... escalated. She had expected him to be a smug asshole about it, or at least try and take advantage of her, but to her surprise he did neither. He acted like he hadn't noticed at all - saying nothing when her breath hitched at his touch or when he caught her staring. And when it became painfully obvious, when neither of them could ignore it... She still remembered his pupils blown black and ringed with tiny black veins when he had scented her arousal after they had danced together a little too closely on The Night of Badness. She had almost cried with embarrassment when she realised it was because he could actually _smell_ her response to him. But he had talked her down, and she ached at the memory of his kind smile. _"Hey, don't sweat it", "I don't care", "it's natural", "it doesn't mean anything."_

 

He brought his hand up to touch his cheek where her palm had made contact. Whatever had come over him, that seemed to snap him out of it, and he looked at her with eyes full of regret. "God, I'm sorry. I don't know what... I'm sorry Bon."

She couldn't find it in herself to be angry with him. Booze and sex: This was just how he coped. It was they only way he knew. She was just going to have to teach him a different way. She put a smile on her face that didn't quite reach her eyes.

"Just please tell me you were smoother than that with that V-named girl."

He was still rubbing his cheek. "Maybe it was Valerie?"

She huffed half a laugh. "Better than Krystal with a K. Your standards are improving."

He put on his best confused face. "I had standards?". She snickered, glad the tension had eased. After a couple of beats of still uncomfortable silence, she spoke.

"Do you think you could dig out some spare bedding? I'm gonna go down to the store, restock the refrigerator and pick up a toothbrush."

"Sure." He looked at her like she was his own personal saviour before turning and heading towards the bedroom.

"You need anything? No alcohol, obviously."

He paused and turned around. "Are you coming back?"

"Of course I am."

"Then I don't need anything else."


	4. Chapter 4

The next couple of weeks were rough as Bonnie dragged Damon kicking and screaming through alcohol withdrawal. One day he'd be trying to kick her out to spare her the worst of it, being belligerent, difficult and downright mean, doing his best to hurt her feelings and make her storm out. The next he'd be curled against her like she was the only thing keeping him going while she told him stories about her travels.

 

Today it was the former.

 

"Why are you still here?" Damon gritted out through his teeth. He was shaking and sweating, and looked to all intents and purposes like his insides were on fire. He'd only looked marginally worse than this after the werewolf bite. He threw himself back on the bed. "Do you get your kicks watching me suffer? Cos I can think of at least a dozen more fun ways to put that kink to use."

Bonnie would have given her left arm to spare him this if she could guarantee he wouldn't just reach for the bottle immediately after. She wrung out a washcloth and went over to sit with him, resting the cloth against his forehead.

"I'm not going anywhere. Heroin chic looked way better on Kate Moss than it does on you, and we gotta fix you up so you can go break some more hearts before you get old."

"Yeah. better make the most of the couple decades where my dick can still stand up under it's own steam." He laughed bitterly, turning into a cough with the rasp in his throat. "God, I was such an idiot. I was fucking immortal. Untouchable. I gave it up and for what? _This_?" He threw his head back against the headboard. "Maybe I'll just put an ad on Craiglist and get some other poor lovesick schmuck bloodsucker to drink this cure outta me. Save myself the trouble."

"Hey! Don't say that."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because it may not feel like it right now, but this was a gift. Stefan was desperate for a human life. So was Enzo." She tried to ignore the twinge in her chest when she thought of Enzo. She hadn't said his name aloud in so long. "But they didn't get to have it - you did. And if you throw it away, you're disrespecting their memory. You have to see that."

He pulled himself up straight with obvious effort. Oh joy, another Damon-style filibuster inbound.

"I don't have to see _shit_. Don't you get it? I'm not miserable because me and Elena didn't go the distance. Let's face it, we all saw that one coming. I'm miserable because being human _sucks_. If this whole delightful withdrawal thing wasn't bad enough, I'm weak as a goddamn kitten - I can't lift a keg behind the bar without help. I'm so fragile I'm constantly scared I'm gonna maim myself just taking out the trash or crossing the street. My reaction times are a fucking _joke_ \- I'm terrified to even take my baby out of the garage in case I wrap her around a telegraph pole. I get backache if I sleep in too late, and I get cranky if I don't sleep enough. I have to drink water all the damn time just to pee it out an hour later, which is horrifyingly inefficient. I have to get checked over by a doctor once a year to make sure my decaying flesh prison isn't falling apart at the seams, including a _delightful_ moment no-one thought to warn me about where the doc sticks his finger up my ass without even buying me a drink first. I'm lactose intolerant, so I can't even eat a cheeseburger without feeling like my insides are being shredded. I can't drink more than a bottle of scotch without passing out, so I actually have to drink _beer_ if I want to last out a night with friends. Speaking of lasting out the night, my stamina is _laughable_ \- I can't fuck for more than a few hours without a break, and it takes me almost 20 minutes to get hard again after I come. I found a grey hair a few months ago, and I had a goddamn panic attack in the bathroom because it felt like a death sentence. Sometimes when I'm trying to get to sleep at night, I'm convinced I can actually _hear_ my cells dying one by one as I rot. So please, tell me again how this is such a _gift_. How _grateful_ I should be."

After a few seconds of stunned silence, Bonnie couldn't help it. She just couldn't keep it together. The whole rant was so petulant. She started laughing. And not just a little bit - roaring. Hard enough that tears were running down her face. Damon was incredulous.

"Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realise my slow inevitable death was such a laugh riot."

After ten seconds or so, he either saw the funny side as well or her laughter was just infectious, as a smile cracked through and he chuckled as well. It was a good while before Bonnie managed to regain enough composure to speak, though she was still fighting for breath.

"Wait... why... why did you freak out over one grey hair? Dealing with your bullshit these past couple weeks has given me a whole bunch."

He gave her his _'I'm not telling you'_ look, but she just waited expectantly for an answer.

"It wasn't on my head." He ground out. She lost it again. "That isn't funny!" But the smile he was trying to suppress told her he knew it was, and he joined her in raucous laughter again.

 

Once they both stopped laughing again, he gave a groan that told her his insides were still roiling. Laughter might be the best medicine, but it was a bit more than he was up to right now. She gave him a sympathetic look.

"I know you don't feel like eating, but you need to. I'm gonna go fix you something, okay?"

He gave her a nod that said he was about as happy about the idea as she expected him to be. She got up and headed to the kitchen, pausing in the doorway for one more comment.

"By the way, twenty minute refractory period?" She gave him a moderately impressed look as if she was sizing him up. "Not bad."

She bit the inside of her cheek and left before he had the chance to reply.


	5. Chapter 5

A few weeks on, the worst had passed. Living above a bar wasn't the ideal situation for an alcoholic in recovery, but after over a century and a half of practice controlling bloodlust, Damon was managing well enough. He was also starting to look healthy again - his skin had a healthy glow instead of the corpse-like pallor he had when she arrived, he had put back some of the weight he had lost, and his eyes... Well, Bonnie did her best not to look too hard. His self-control might be iron-clad, but hers had limits. To be honest, she was already teetering on the edge of them - there had been more than a few moments where she had made a comment that was the wrong side of flirty, or she had caught herself leaning in to his touch a little too much. She knew she couldn't stay much longer, couldn't stand it. It was one thing when and there was the buffer of other people between them, or at least when she knew he was off limits like when he was with Elena, but to be alone with him was a recipe for disaster. Especially because his apartment didn't give them a whole lot of personal space, so she didn't even have the small amount of physical relief she could give herself when they were in the prison world (a week ago she had found herself in the hardware section of the local department store looking wistfully at pulsating showerheads - things were dire). So she knew she would have to leave, and soon. She just didn't know how she was going to break it to him.

 

"Hey Sabrina." Damon came in the door, skin sheened with sweat. A far cry from weeks past when his body had been drenched in the throes of recovery, this was from the exertion of his daily run. It couldn't be called a morning run when he got up at noon - purportedly because of the bar, but really she just thought 150 years of being mostly nocturnal was a hard habit to kick. "Miss me?"

_More than you know_ , she thought ruefully. She kept her eyes low to the floor, but her memory filled in the blanks well enough - his black tank would be clinging with sweat to his toned stomach, his chest heaving slightly and his lips parted as he still caught his breath. She felt desire pooling in her belly and she hadn't even looked at him yet. _Shit_.

"I'm gonna hit the shower. Back in five."

She threw herself back on the couch as the bathroom door closed and tried to pull herself together for the conversation she was dreading. _Well, no time like the present._ When he came out of the bathroom, towel slung dangerously low on his hips, she just blurted it out.

"I'm heading back to Virginia."

She thought she could actually feel him freeze from across the room.

"When?"  
"I don't know - tonight if I can get a flight, tomorrow if not."

She chanced a look at him and he was a picture of worry.

"Did something happen? Care-bear and Ric, the kids?"   
"No, no, It's nothing like that. It's just... It's time for me to go."

"What?" The edge in his voice made her heart hurt. "No, no, no, Bon. You can't. I'm barely functional. I'm one bad day away from drinking the whole damn bar dry, you can't go now!"

She tried to keep her tone resolute even if she didn't feel it.

"You'll always be one bad day away. It's called being an alcoholic."

"So what? You want to be the one to push me off the wagon, is that it?"

"Emotional blackmail, that's real classy, Damon."

"With a K?" A half smile broke through her steely resolve. He must have sensed her wavering, as he crossed the room and put his hands on her arms, his eyes seeking hers out. Her breath hitched at the way the warmth of his skin seeped into hers. "C'mon Bon-Bon, I need you. Give me one good reason you can't stay."

Bonnie put her hands on his forearms and moved him away gently but forcefully, her hands lingering longer than they should on his skin. She lowered her eyes to the floor. Her voice was no more than a whisper.

"Damon, you know the reason."

His eyes were pleading. "Look, just give me a couple minutes to get dressed and we can talk about this."  
"There's nothing to talk about." Her voice was steel. "And I have to pack."

He ran a frustrated hand through his hair and looked up at the ceiling. "God, you are the most infuriating woman."

Bonnie exploded. "Infuriating? What, because I'm trying not to throw our friendship out the window and thinking of myself for a change I'm _infuriating_?! I'm sorry I'm not willing to put my own feelings on the line for you any more than I already have, but-"

"No!" He yelled back. "You're INFURIATING because I'm trying my damnedest not to have the conversation where I tell my best friend I'm in love with her in a fucking TOWEL and you're RUINING IT!"


	6. Chapter 6

The world went silent. Everything stopped.

"What did you say?"

He swore and threw the towel he had around his shoulders across the room in frustration.

"I really wanted to do this right. Wanted to make sure you knew this wasn't a rebound thing or because I'm screwed up after getting sober or whatever. I had a PLAN for Christ's sake - that _never_ happens. And you had to go and fuck it up, so now I'm in a towel telling you I love you, because apparently, I can't do anything ri-"

Her lips crashed into his before he could even finish his sentence. To his credit, he was only stunned for a second before returning the kiss, diving into her with a passion she had only fantasised about. His tongue ran along her lower lip, coaxing it to open and then she was drowning in him. Her hands tangled in his wet hair and he crushed her against his chest so hard it was almost a struggle to breathe. Evidently, he had forgotten his own need for oxygen, as he pulled away gasping a moment later, his forehead resting against her own as they caught their breath and processed how their entire relationship had changed irrevocably inside of a minute.

"I don't know what I would have done if you'd walked out of that door."

Bonnie didn't give him a chance to think about it further, pulling his lips back to meet her own. She was drunk on the feeling of him pressed up against her, like she never dared to think he would be. Bonnie caught his lower lip between her teeth and was rewarded with a low groan that rumbled in his chest and she felt it resonate between her legs, stripping her of whatever shreds remained of her self-control. Her hand slid down to his ass and she pulled him in tight against her, frustrated that she couldn't feel him skin to skin.

 

"Hey stop, wait a second...." Screw waiting, she wanted _more_. "Bon, stop. Stop." He caught her wrists with his hands and pushed her back gently, doing that thing where he leaned against her forehead with his lips tantalisingly close to her own. "It's not that I don't really, _really_ appreciate the enthusiasm, because here for it, but - and I realise I am actually turning into a teenage girl as I say this - I don't want you to think this is just about sex." His thumbs massaged the pulse points of her wrists gently and that simple touch suddenly felt more intimate than she could have imagined it being. "I know you think I use sex as a crutch or whatever, so if you want to not do this..."

It took a second for her lust-addled brain to kick in and translate the words. Damon Salvatore, god of meaningless sex, was standing in front of her, revved up with kiss-swollen lips and breathless with desire, in no more than a towel (that was doing _nothing_ to hide his state of arousal. _Damn_ )... and giving her the option to back out.

"You'd be okay with that?" She managed to breathe out

He chuckled breathily. "Okay is a strong word. I might need to sit in a bath of ice water for a bit, but yeah."

"Damon," Bonnie sighed, lifting her hand to his face, her thumb running along his lip: A gentle and relatively chaste touch. His eyes dipped, obviously preparing for her to say she wanted to wait. "I've been waiting eight goddamn years for you to kiss me like that." His eyes flashed to hers. "If you make me wait a single minute longer, I'm pretty sure it counts as torture"

He breathed out a sigh that was pure relief. "Oh, thank god."  


In a blur of motion that almost resembled vamp speed, he had her pressed against the wall with her thighs wrapped around him as he ground against her, his lips roving her throat with a hunger that made her eyes roll back and his fingers grasping bruisingly at her thigh, pushing her short dress up around her waist. She for a split second tried to remember what panties she was wearing and hoped to God they were at least a little sexy. His tongue and lips teased at the two small scars on her neck left by his fangs so many years ago when he had tasted her in anger and she bit back a moan when blunt human teeth nipped at her neck. _You can take the vampire out of the man..._ She thought with a smile. The smile quickly turned into a gasp and her hand twisted in his hair as he ground hard against her core and she was pretty sure if he kept this up she would come just from making out. It seemed he had other ideas though, as he pinned her to the wall with his hips, pulling her dress over her head and throwing it aside. She wasn't wearing a bra and his bare skin finally pressed against hers has his mouth claimed hers again was _heaven_.

 

Part of her was hoping he would just rip off her underwear and fuck her against the wall, but that theory was quickly invalidated when he lowered her legs, her feet coming to rest on the floor. She was almost disappointed until he hooked his thumbs under the waistband of her panties (green lace, she noted - could be worse) and sank to his knees against her, pulling them down and letting them drop to the floor. His lips against her inner thigh were enough that she though she might pass out, but when he hooked her thigh over his shoulder, ran his tongue the whole soaked length of her, and let out a guttural moan at the taste she felt in her knees, she damn near _combusted_. Her hips jerked out towards him involuntarily, and he placed one hand on her stomach to press her back against the wall. He didn't even pause for breath before dipping his tongue inside her like an x-rated french kiss, and when he drew it back out and over her clit her whole body convulsed. He worked her like this until she was gasping for breath, before leisurely dipping two fingers into her and curling them inside her. The high-pitched noise she made in response was probably in the range only dogs could hear, but her hand gripping his hair like it was the only thing holding her to earth told him she liked it well enough, and she felt his smile against her. His tongue flicked against her clit just as he did that magical twisting thing again with his fingers and she broke apart crying his name as she shattered into a million pieces.

 

He kissed her quivering thighs as she came down from her high. She was pretty sure he'd already ruined her for all other men and this wasn't even the main event. He gently eased her thigh off of his shoulder, still supporting her weight (which she was thankful for, because otherwise she would have crumpled to the floor in an undignified heap the second he let go). He kissed his way back up her body, pausing to place another playful nip at her neck that made her shudder. His towel had mercifully fallen away when he stood up.

_Well, that explains the arrogance_ , she mused.

When he spoke, his breath on her throat gave her chills.

"Bed or wall?"

She was hardly in a fit state to be making decisions right now.  
"I gotta pick just one?" Her voice sounded hoarse. Had she been screaming? Probably. "I was promised a 20 minute recovery period."

He laughed. "Fine. Bed or wall _first_?"

She had to force her brain to think because he was still macking on her neck. The wall had it's merits. For one, they were already here. But she was a romantic at heart, and was willing to bet he was too.

"Take me to bed."

He groaned against her neck. "You couldn't have said that to me back in 1994?"

She giggled as he lifted her into a bridal carry, the sound soon swallowed up by his kiss.


	7. Chapter 7

He was apparently unable to stop himself from stealing occasional kisses en route to the bedroom, even at the threat of bumping into a wall or doorway. When they reached the bed, he laid her down as gently as if she was made of glass, but when he laid on top of her, his weight pressed down on her deliciously. It felt so perfect it almost distracted her when he reached for the nightstand.

"What are you doing?"

In answer he pulled out a condom. "Human now, remember? Might not be able to knock you up, but..."

She shook her head. She knew he was clean - she'd dragged him to the doctor for a full health check once he was past the worse of his homebrew rehab, and that had included a screen. "Let me feel you. Please."

He slid inside her like a knife into warm butter. Her eyes rolled back at how perfectly they fit together, and the way he swore into her neck when he bottomed out was her new favourite thing _ever_. When he started moving, she immediately agreed that _yes_ , she should definitely have dragged him up the stairs by his flannel shirts in the prison world, because nobody had ever hit her sweet spot like he did, and he was doing with every single thrust. He drank down her moans like honey, and when she rolled her hips up to meet him as he thrust into her, she swallowed his right back. It wasn't long before she was hovering on the edge again. He'd come up for air, his ice blue eyes burning into her like he wanted to consume her with his gaze alone. She dared a look between their sweat-slick bodies, watching his length drive into her, and that was enough to send her over, grabbing his ass and pressing him deeper as she went. He panted sharply, pressing her hips with his into the mattress as he halted his own release, pausing only a few moments before he started moving again. _Laughable stamina, he'd said - compared to what?!_

When he withdrew next, she used what remained of the muscles he had turned to jelly to nudge him over with her thigh. He took the direction, rolling onto his back, but pulled her back down onto him almost immediately, as if he resented every second they weren't joined. She rode him upright, his hands at her hips were half supporting her and half driving her down harder onto him. This angle allowed her to feel him more deeply, and it only served to reaffirm how perfectly their bodies fit - it was like they were made for one another. She felt his hips stutter a little and knew he wouldn't last much longer. As if thinking the same thing, he shifted one hand from her hip and snaked it between them, brushing her clit. Her channel clenched reflexively and she realised she was close too. Shifting her knees back, she slid her body along his, laying skin to skin as she writhed against him, pressing against his fingers more insistently. It was seconds before she was in freefall again, and she sank her teeth into his neck to muffle her scream as her orgasm triggered his own and she felt him flood into her. Totally spent, she collapsed against his chest, unwilling to be separated from him yet.

 

She felt him soften inside her as he reached up to play with her hair, happy to lay in contented silence.

"I'm totally making you vampcakes tomorrow."

Or not.

"I would so love to hurt you right now."

"Wow, getting kinky this early in a relationship, Bon? Risky move. You might offend my delicate sensibilities."  
"Please. With you it's a miracle you aren't serving me vampcakes on your naked body."  
"Now there's an idea."

"Is it too much to hope you'll forget this conversation by the time tomorrow rolls around?"

"Hey, I'm not senile yet thank you very much."

"Really? Because I think I saw another grey hair down there."

"Did I say I loved you? Because I meant the other thing."  
"Easy mistake to make. After all, you're only human."  
"Yeah. Yeah I am."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading guys! I've had a few comments asking for an extension or some more after this, so thought I would add a note to explain my reasoning for not doing this.
> 
> I like my writing to spark imagination, so you will almost never get a 100% closure ending with my fics ("and so this is how they lived until the end of their days" etc). That way, you can fill in the blanks, and every reader will have a different story experience: Maybe Bonnie found a witchy way around Damon's fertility issues. Maybe Damon couldn't come to terms with being human after all and Bonnie found a way to send him back in time, giving them a second shot at those 8 wasted years. If you're a die-hard canon-adherent, maybe Damon and Elena even found their way back to one another somehow - Elena's pregnancy could have been supernatural, after all. 
> 
> If the lack of closure frustrates you, I'd love to read your continuations of this story - consider this me passing the baton ;) 
> 
> Much love xx


End file.
